nug – Vandalog – A Street Art Blog

April 14, 2013April 12, 2013

Nug show coming soon to Amsterdam

Swedish graffiti writer Nug (of running around a train station like a crazy man fame) will be showing later this month at Unruly Gallery in Amsterdam. I’m a big fan of Nug and the folks at Unruly, so I’m glad to see them getting together.

Nug is one of the most controversial artists in Sweden, with the country’s Minister of Culture being a particularly famous hater. I love these quotes about Nug’s work by current and former Ministers of Culture from around Europe:

“This isn’t art. This is damage and vandalism.” – Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth (Minister of Culture, Sweden)
“A Minister of Culture should not decide what is art and what is not. As a happy reminder of this, I have a print of Nug’s Territorial Pissing hanging on my office wall.” – Paavo Arhinmäki (Minister of Culture, Finland)
“A Minister of Culture is allowed to think a lot of things about about art and culture. That it should tempt people to watch or listen to it. That it should be relevant to society. That it should be critical; encourage change. But beautiful or ugly? Fortunately, that’s not up to the Minister to decide.” – Hedy d’Ancona (former Minister of Culture, Netherlands)

The show opens on April 26th (5-8pm) and will only be up for that weekend. Opening night will also double as the launch of a new book from Nug. Get there early because Nug will be signing 70 copies of his book and the first 10 people to purchase a book will also get a vinyl record of Nug’s soundtrack.

Nug’s book, I am just Trying to be Nice, will be available online here after the launch. Each copy of the book features a unique cover painted by Nug. This video sheds some light on that:

I am just trying to be nice – NUG from John on Vimeo.

UG_NUG_invite

Photos courtesy of Unruly Gallery

May 19, 2012May 17, 2012

Nug at Skalitzers Gallery

Nug, the artist best-known for basically going crazy with a spray-can in hand, has a solo show on right now at Skalitzers Gallery in Berlin. I’m not sure what I think of the work (which is a sort of installation), but I have a feeling that looking at it online is a very different experience to seeing it in person. Seems to me that Nug is most interesting when doing performance art, but it’s difficult to say based on only seeing jpegs. If anyone has seen the show in the flesh, I’d love to read your thoughts in the comments. Human Behaviour is open now through June 2nd.

Photos courtesy of Skalitzers Gallery

May 5, 2012November 21, 2012

Weekend link-o-rama

Late link-o-rama this week. Troy Lovegates and Labrona are visiting to paint a mural at Haverford College, and it’s the week of all my final exams. Here’s what I’ve been reading to distract myself:

With these two pieces, Carmichael Collective looks like a group of artists on the way up.
Barry McGee has a show opening on the 12th at Prism in LA.
Mega-collector Selim Varol will be showing the best bits of his art collection in Berlin.
Nice t-shirt by Gris1 of DMV.
Shepard Fairey has a show open now at Pace Prints in NYC.
Spaceboy’s animation/wheatpastes for Red Stripe are kind of interesting, even if it’s mostly post-production work that makes it cool.
A beautiful new wall by Conor Harrington.
Nug (of this fame) is showing at Skalitzers in Berlin in a few days. I can’t wait to see how the show looks.

Photo by Elfo

July 8, 2011July 8, 2011

Weekend link-o-rama

Labrona and Gawd. Click the photo to view it large.

Last night might have been my busiest 1st Thursday ever, and I didn’t even stop off everywhere I wanted to. Either way, I’ll have to go back to a few galleries this week to actually look at the art properly. Even with a cursory glance though, the Charming Baker show was the highlight by a mile. I’m not sure how sustainable it is to sell paintings at the prices they sold for last night, but damn it looked good. Here’s a few things I could have posted about last night, had I not been out being a gallery-hopping scenester…

Probably the coolest thing I’ve seen all week: Nug (this guy) visited FAME Festival.
Everfresh have created the graffiti writer’s dream machine: The Graff Mobile.
Conor Harrington has been painting some murals of bulls in Ireland. I like this one. This one, not so much. Unfortunately, I cannot figure out why that is about either of the walls.
In addition to his LA show, Lush is doing a show in August at Fifty24SF.
As usual, Dal does something visually stunning.
Leon Reid IV is doing a Kickstarter campaign for his latest potential public sculpture in New York City.
Meighan O’Toole at My Love for You has done a podcast where she interviewed up with Steve Powers, the first in what will hopefully be a series of podcasts from her.
A new print from Shepard Fairey is being released, partially for charity, in New York this weekend.
Showpaper has done round 2 of its Community Serviced project where they get artists to paint newspaper bin boxes for Showpaper. Check out all the photos from round 2 here.

Photo by Labrona